Leadership skills are among the top five competencies companies focus on during the hiring process. Although graduating students may not seek a position with the intent to lead or direct a team, having a knowledge of important leadership skills can give students the upper hand during their professional development.
Hiring companies understand that learning and practicing leadership skills can lead to effective self-management, effective communication (both highly esteemed qualities in today’s remote work environment), and positive teamwork. These skills help employees to cultivate constructive professional relationships with coworkers and employers and experience greater fulfillment in their positions.
How Can MyEducator Help My Students Learn and Practice Leadership Skills?
Fundamentals of Business Leadership is a smart textbook published by MyEducator that teaches students about the evolution of leadership theories over time and gives them the tools they need to develop leadership skills. Students learn the leadership skills that companies are looking for today.
This resource includes videos, assessments, and study tools to help students master these leadership skills. The authors of this book, Doctors Brad Winn, Bret Crane, and Scott Hammond, are passionate about the subject of leadership and generously share their own experiences as executives in the industry. From deconstructing high-stress situations to managing major developments in technology, they’ve seen it all and are now helping students to know about leadership, practice leadership, and become leaders.
Leadership in 10 Minutes: An Overview of Leadership Skills Taught in Fundamentals of Business Leadership
Be Self-Aware of Personal Characteristics as a Leader and Then Identify and Live Your Values
A portion of this book is devoted to helping students understand their own personalities, teaching about openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, agreeableness, and more.
“There is an age-old question that continues to be asked today. Namely, are leaders made or born? The answer is a resounding ‘yes!’ As it turns out, your leadership signature is a function of your personality, your experiences, and your choices. Personality only explains about half of your leadership style.
The takeaway is that other factors, including your choices and your experiences, influence leadership.”
Students learn how their awareness as leaders can help them capitalize on innate traits while working hard to develop skills of leadership.
Many students entering the workforce desire to be effective leaders—the kind of leaders others look to for support and direction—but it can be hard to know where to start in gaining the trust of others. In this book, students go on a journey of discovering their own values and becoming authentic leaders through ethical behavior, integrity, internal direction, warmth, competence, and communication.
Students are presented a case study that walks them through a scenario where values are called into question. The case study asks open-ended questions that help students to determine which actions their values would lead them to take.
Engage in Continual Learning: Embracing a Growth Mindset
Students are taught skills for individual learning, how to model learning behaviors, how to promote psychological safety and team learning, and how to make feedback and learning a positive experience.
Understand How to Regulate Personal Emotions and Then Communicate Them Effectively
How can practicing empathy help to facilitate collaboration? Students learn about empathy and how to create high-quality connections through emotional intelligence, self-awareness and self-regulation, and social intelligence.
Leaders understand how to open meaningful dialogue within their immediate group and with other associations. There are three fields of communication:
1. Interpersonal
2. Team
3. Strategic
Students learn skills in each field: how to build trust through interpersonal communication; the relationship between teams, dialogue, and creativity; and the role leadership has in strategic communication. They even learn where these three fields tend to merge. Students are encouraged to discuss questions and topics like, Why is it hard to make the time and space to have creative dialogues in the workplace? and, Discuss how to improve listening in your company, community, and family.
Students are taught the basics of what teams are, why it’s beneficial to work in a team, how to build an effective team, how to develop as a team, and how to lead a team.
Act Ethically and Exert a Positive Change
Many students have been taught the principles of right-and-wrong ethics, but there are many ethical questions leaders face that seem to fall into gray areas. What if making the right choice deeply offends someone? What if making the right choice appears to be a wrong choice to the public eye?
“The truth is that all leaders frequently face ethical, moral, and even legal decisions sometimes on a grand scale, and sometimes with small, obscure issues. In fact, almost every decision a leader makes has some ethical component. In addition, the organizational environments that leaders work
in vary.
“In some organizations, using a company paperclip for a personal project is seen as wrong. In other cases, particularly new-style tech organizations, managers are encouraged to spend company money keeping their employees fed. In some companies, middle managers are even encouraged to use company funds to buy birthday presents for the children of employees.
“Sometimes the ethical practices, rules, and regulations are spelled out and clear, but often they are not. A good leader will learn from others what the organization formally and informally allows and will also know their own personal limitations.”
Students are presented with several scenarios that teach them how to learn about their organization’s policies and encourage them to develop their own codes of conduct that will help them approach the following questions:
• Am I a good steward of confidential information or things that are not mine?
• How will I act when I am asked to do something illegal or unethical?
• What will I do if I or someone else has acted unethically?
• How will I create an environment of respect for all people?
Leaders are facilitators of change. Leaders become leaders because they want to influence a change in an organization, a community, or a team. Students learn why it’s important their influence be a positive one and how to use their power responsibly and with care.
Be Culturally Aware in Business
Cultural awareness can sometimes be a complicated to topic to approach, but this text teaches students how consider global, gender, and cultural issues. It highlights what cultural difference is, how to bridge cultural difference, and how to have discussions about cultural dimensions using the following categories of questions:
1. How do we see our identity? (Collectivist or Individualist)
2. How do we find and maintain agreements? (Universalist or Particularist)
3. How do we work together as a team? (Low or High Power Distance)
4. How do we deal with time differently? (Polychronic or Monochronic)
5. How do we deal with organizational status differently? (Affiliation or Achievement)
Students examine each of the five cultural questions using a scenario-based approach.
- Students are asked to “look in” and see their own cultural preferences.
- Students are asked to “look out” and identify the cultural preferences of others, paying particular attention to issues of leadership.
- Students are asked to “look around” and find ways they can work together with people who are culturally different to transcend these differences and find the “third way.”
By the end of the book, students are prepared for their role in the future of leadership. They have the skills necessary to positively lead teams and organizations.
If you are interested in adopting this textbook into your teaching or learning more about what this text has to offer, check out a demo link for Fundamentals of Business Leadership, or contact our team for answers!
Interested in learning more about MyEducator’s leadership offerings? Check out our blog article, “The 4 Magical Secrets of Successful Leadership,” to learn about another great leadership resource for your students, How’s the Culture in Your Kingdom? Dan Cockerell, former vice president of EPCOT, Disney’s Hollywood Studios, and the Magic Kingdom, shares the leadership lessons he’s learned throughout his time in Disney leadership.
